Mandela Blamed for Inequality

From an otherwise interesting Andrew Ross Sorkin column about how Nelson Mandela moved toward capitalism:

But for all of Mr. Mandela's embrace of capitalism and free markets, as demonstrated though his policy called GEAR (Growth, Employment and Redistribution), the results raise more questions than answers about its success.

South Africa has certainly grown, but at an annual 3.2 percent clip from 1993 to 2012, far below other emerging countries like China and India. And the gap between the haves and have-nots is now higher than it was when Mr. Mandela became president. Inequality in South Africa is a real and growing issue.

Only when defined in the most narrow economic terms, as the Times, alas, tends to do.

You wonder how the Times would have covered the exodus from Egypt: "True, God parted the Red Sea and brought the Children of Israel out of Egypt. But after slavery ended, the gap between haves and have-nots started to widen and become a real and growing issue..."

If Mencken's definition of Puritanism was "the haunting fear that someone, somewhere may be happy," then the definition of modern New York Times-Bill de Blasio-Barack Obama style liberalism is the haunting fear that someone, somewhere might be earning more money than somebody else.